Colonial Palimpsest
Tracing Inscriptions of Sápmi and Sámi
Description:... "This dissertation is a colonial discourse analysis of the construction of Sápmi (Sámiland) as colonized territory and the Sámi as colonized subjects, and an exploration of some oppositional responses to that construction. Beginning with classical representations of the wilderness beyond the civilized space of the polis - and subsequently of the empire - and of the inhabitants with which the ancient Greek, Roman, and Hebrew imaginations populated this space, the analysis goes on to trace the incorporation of the Sámi into world views that constructed the uncivilized as mirrors to reflect the image of the civilized gazing subject back to himself. From Tacitus' Germania and later Roman and post-Roman Mediterranean texts, through the medieval and early modern periods, the examination follows the pre-colonial textual production of tropes of wildness, magic, and remoteness that form the basis of colonial discursive treatment of the Sámi. Colonial discourse emerges with the beginning of colonial expropriation of Sápmi and the Sámi in the sixteenth century. This dissertation follows the development of that discourse, and examines its transformations as it legitimizes and accommodates colonization into the twentieth century. Successively informed by and incorporated within various metropolitan European discourses, including those of the Enlightenment, the Noble Savage, and Social Darwinism, colonial discourse marginalizes and objectifies the Sámi while it inscribes them and their territory within the modern states of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The examination of colonial discourse culminates with the extreme marginalization of the Sámi in Knut Hamsun' s novel 'Markens grøde.' In its final section this dissertation examines the challenges facing oppositional texts, situated as they are within the traditions of colonial discourse's systems of representational containment and appropriation. One of the primary difficulties faced by both Sámi and non-Sámi authors in their counter-hegemonic endeavors is avoiding the essentialisms and binary oppositions posited by colonial discourse. This dissertation examines several different approaches to liberatory writing on the Sami, ending with Aagot Vinterbo-Hohr's 'Palimpsest' and Laila Stien's 'Vekselsang, ' two novels that undermine the essentialist constructions of colonial discourse and open a discursive space for multiple and diverse articulations of Sámi resistance and identity"--Leaves ix-x.
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